


Serein

by ZTNBooks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Angst with a sad ending, Canon Compliant, Love Letters, M/M, Mentioned Allura/Lance - Freeform, Mentioned Allura/Lotor, Mentioned Keith/Lance - Freeform, One Shot, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 03:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20202718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZTNBooks/pseuds/ZTNBooks
Summary: Lance leaves the team a year after Allura's death. They haven't heard from him since, but Keith still sends him a message each year. This year's message is different.





	Serein

**Author's Note:**

> Serein; rain falling from a cloudless sky.
> 
> It's my birthday and I'm emo about lost love so please take this fic of me projecting my feelings onto Keith and Lance. No happy ending because life sucks.

Four years. It’d been four years since he’d left.

Lance had pursued Allura for ages. They’d all laughed at him. They’d teased him and taunted him and belittled him for it. She’d rejected him time and time again. And then she’d picked him up the second Lotor betrayed them.

Keith wasn’t going to waste his time questioning the legitimacy of her feelings for Lance. It didn’t matter how she’d felt about him. All that mattered was how he felt about her. Because that’d been the catalyst. That’d been his downfall. That’s what’d caused him to leave.

The Blue Lion couldn’t be found. Lance had taken it away from them. Had left them unable to form Voltron and left their team broken. Hunk and Pidge had lost a best friend. Shiro had lost a team member. And Keith had lost… something else entirely.

He didn’t blame Lance for leaving. There were days he wished he could leave too. That’s just what losing the love of your life did to you. Made you feel isolated. Made your heart ache and your chest tighten. It made you feel cold inside like there was a physical hole in you that their love used to fill. Sometimes, when he thought of Lance, Keith felt like the tendons in his heart were literally snapping.

Lance had been at the dinner commemorating Allura’s sacrifice with the rest of them. He’d been bubbly and talkative and everything he’d always been. Then the next morning, he’d disappeared. No goodbye and no explanation. Maybe it would’ve been easier for Keith to accept if he’d been able to say goodbye. Or if he’d gotten to talk to Lance one last time. Tell him how he felt, how hurt he was at the deterioration of their relationship. But the universe wasn’t fair.

So each year, on the anniversary of Lance’s disappearance, Keith sent him a message. He didn’t know if Lance got them. He could be light years away for all they knew. But Keith hoped that someday, somehow, his words would reach Lance.

There’d been four messages sent already. The first sent the day Lance disappeared, four years ago. Keith had been panicked. They’d all been, thinking that Lance had been kidnapped. At least until they’d found Blue gone, at least. Then they’d pieced together what’d happened. Lance had left of his own accord. Keith had sat down in Red, filming a message to send to Blue, asking Lance if he was okay and if he was coming back. He didn’t hear anything back.

The next year, three years ago, had been the worst. Keith had still had hope that Lance would return. He’d begged Lance to come back. Begged him to at least let them know if he was alive. He’d cried. He’d broken down and screamed and cursed the universe. “I just want to know that you’re okay. Even if you’re not coming back,” he’d said.

Two years ago, the message had been brief. He’d been caught up in relief work with the Blade of Marmora. He’d hardly had a second to breathe, let alone sit down and film a message. “We miss you. Send us a sign that you’re out there. Please, Lance.”

Last year, he’d given up hope. Last year he’d been angry. He had watched his friends, his _family_, break over Lance’s disappearance. 

Hunk no longer talked to the rest of them, focusing all his attention on honing his culinary skills. Pidge threw herself so wholly into her work that she’d been hospitalized thrice in the last year after failing to care for herself. 

Coran didn’t contact them unless he had to. Every time he reached out to them, it was for something diplomatic. He didn’t ask after them, wondering how they were or what they were up to. Not anymore. Lance had been his favorite, after all. And while Shiro pretended that everything was fine, Keith could see the tiredness on his face. The bags under his eyes grew exponentially every month. The creases in his forehead deepened. And the corners of his mouth submitted to gravity, a permanent frown cemented on his face.

Last year, Keith’s message had been full of spite. He’d taken everything out on Lance, telling him how horrible things had gotten. Telling him how much he despised Lance for hurting their friends. But he’d still ended his message by asking Lance to come home.

This year, as Keith sat down to film his message, he resolved to address the thing he’d been avoiding.

He sat in the pilot seat of the red lion, running his hands over the familiar surface. It’d been so long since he’d flown her. He didn’t know if he remembered how to.

Red pulled up the recording screen without him having to prompt her. She already knew why he was here. The Lions missed their sister as much as the team missed Lance.

Keith stared at himself on the screen for a moment. He’d changed so much in these past four years. His hair had grown longer, reaching past his armpits now. The scar on his face had faded, nearly white now and hardly visible. Crows feet had appeared around his eyes. His smile lines were deeper, too. It was weird to think about how much he’d been smiling since Lance had left. It wasn’t because he was happy, really. Smiling and being friendly was just part of humanitarian work. But seeing the lines around his mouth reminded him of Lance’s smile and he felt pain spark in his chest all over again.

He leaned forward to click record, ready to get his message out into the universe and out of his head.

“Hi, Lance.

I don’t know if you’ll get this message. Or if you’ve gotten the ones I sent before. I guess it doesn’t really matter anymore. Nothing I say is going to bring you home. We don’t even know if you’re alive anymore. You couldn’t even tell us that much.”

Keith clenched his jaw, teeth grinding together. He wasn’t here to get mad at Lance for ignoring them. He willed the anger away, letting his jaw relax and resuming his message.

“It’s been four years since you left. A lot has changed. But my… feelings for you… haven’t…”

Keith couldn’t look at himself in the screen anymore, feeling a blush rising on his cheeks. He felt stupid. What was he, a preteen? Getting embarrassed about his feelings was so juvenile.

“It’s been six years since you kissed me last.” Keith brought a hand up to touch his lips absentmindedly. “They say your body replaces all of its cells every seven years. You essentially become a new person. The you from seven years ago won’t be the same as the present you. It’s like that question of ‘how much of a ship can you replace before it becomes a new ship?’.” Keith swallowed thickly before he spoke again. “But I don’t want that to happen. I don’t want a new body with new cells. Because then I’ll have a new body that you’ve never touched. And you’ll be erased from me.”

Keith looked back into the screen, lips pursed into a thin line. “I want to hold on to the memory of you for as long as I can, even if it’s impossible.”

“I know I never told you how I felt. And I know we only got together because you were upset about Allura and Lotor dating. I know it was stupid of me to expect anything from our relationship. Even back then, I knew it wasn’t real. Not for you, at least.” 

Keith sighed, staring past the screen and out the front of the lion. The red lion was parked right across from the blue lion’s empty space in the hangar. It only hurt more to see the empty spot.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about me. About us and what we were. Or, well, what we weren’t. And I realized that I… I fell in love with you.”

The blush returned to his cheeks with a passion as he admitted it aloud. He’d never told Lance those words. Had buried them as far down as he could for as long as he could. Had denied them for years because it was a weakness to love and he couldn’t afford to have any weaknesses. 

But now with Team Voltron practically dissolved and the universe almost entirely united, he had nothing to lose. His admission wouldn’t jeopardize their team if there was no team left. And he didn’t have to pretend to be strong anymore since the war was nearly over. He could have this weakness. He could have Lance. Or he could’ve if Lance hadn’t left.

“And no matter how much I tried to tell myself I didn’t, I couldn’t stop loving you. It hurt so much to see you with Allura. But I wanted you to be happy. Even if you never come home, as long as you’re happy, I’ll be okay. I wish I could stop loving you. I wish I could stop hurting every time I think about you. I wish you’d never left in the first place. And I-”

Keith choked on a sob. He brought a hand up to cover his face as he felt tears burning behind his eyes.

His voice came out in a hoarse whisper as he tried not to cry. “I wish I knew why you left. I wish I could hold you one last time and tell you it’s going to be okay. I just really, really miss you.”

A hot tear streaked down Keith’s face, burning a wet line down his cheek and towards his chin.

Keith lifted his face, letting his teary-eyed face be in full view of the camera.

“I thought I was just confusing my feelings of teenage lust for love. But it’s been years since then and I still love you. It’s not about your body or anything of that sort. It’s about you as a person. I miss your laugh. And your smile. I miss the way you talk when you flirt. I miss watching you bake with Hunk. I miss watching you concentrate when you train. I miss the way you try not to smile and ruin your face mask at night.”

Keith smiled wryly at the memories, bittersweet as they were.

“Most of all, I miss your voice. I miss hearing you talk about your family late at night. I miss your dumb jokes and your even dumber pickup lines. I miss the way your voice sounds in the morning. Or late at night when you’re trying too hard to stay awake.”

Keith’s gaze drifted back to the empty space where the blue lion used to sit.

“I miss everything about you.”

Keith closed his eyes, willing himself not to let his emotion show on his face. Even if he had just spilled his guts to the camera, he was trying to maintain _some_ dignity.

“I don’t know why I’m even recording this. You could be dead for all we know. This is stupid. I’m so stupid. Even if you do see this, it’s not like anything will change. You’ll still be out there in space and I’ll be here… Missing you.”

Keith took one last look at the screen, his eyes now red-rimmed and watery, his lip trembling slightly. He looked like an emotional idiot.

“I hate you sometimes. I tell myself I do because it’s easier than admitting otherwise. But the truth is that I love you, Lance. And no matter what happens, I won’t stop loving you. I wish I could. God, how I wish I could. Even if you never come back. Even if we never find out what happened to you or why you left, I don’t think I could forget you. Even if every cell in my body is replaced and it’s like you never touched me, I could never forget you. Because I love you, Lance. I love you so much. And I’m mad that I didn’t admit it to myself until now. I hate myself because I can’t stop loving you.”

And with that, Keith hit the stop button and sent the video into the vacuum of space. He didn’t know if Lance would ever see it, but he couldn’t really be bothered to care.

**Author's Note:**

> It was rushed and unbeta'd but I need to let my sad feelings out into the universe so they're not fermenting inside me anymore.
> 
> You can follow me on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/ztnbooks/) if you want! And if you have any questions/comments, leave them down below. I always reply to comments and I love hearing from you guys!


End file.
